Why Pollution Threatens the Unborn

by Sophie Mitchell

A recent study by Nature Communications has concluded that ‘ambient black soot particles reach the fetal side of the placenta’, indicating that pollution can now affect our unborn children and future generations.

The placenta is made up of two distinctive parts, the maternal placenta and the fetal placenta. Oxygen and nutrients cross from the maternal placenta to the fetal placenta, while waste products such as carbon dioxide pass the other way. It is through this mechanism that substances like alcohol and nicotine can cross into an unborn child and why mothers are encouraged to avoid them. The research suggests these soot particles reach the placenta from the mother's lungs, with the transfer of these soot particles ‘representing a potential mechanism explaining the detrimental health effects of pollution from early life onwards.’

Professor Jonathan Grigg of Queen Mary University, London, said: “There's very strong epidemiological evidence that maternal exposure to air-pollution particles is associated with adverse outcomes such as miscarriage.” Yet, while this information may make pregnant women run for the ‘clean air’ of the country-side, accepts do accept that pregnant women cannot change the area they live in. Small changes such as ventilating houses using windows facing away from busy roads or choosing routes if walking or cycling with less traffic, can reduce the amount of exposure to potentially harmful pollutants. Furthermore, experts have also claimed that this needs “to be addressed at policy levels” and further research is needed into the potentially harmful effects soot particulates may have on the unborn child.